Ensign Build

Brainstorm word cloud

Terms mined today from the brief, current gallery submissions, past winning projects in related Devpost hackathons and the discussion board. Bigger = more frequent (brief and winners weigh more). Click a word to see winning projects that mention it.

AI · students · helping · solution · create · skills · experiences · track · discover · smarter · real-world · complex · sales · bring · idea · product · connections · gaming · cloud · meet · platform · play · friends · generator · upload · generate · fully · autonomous · forensic · architecture · findings · safety · stop · check · ones · plan · search · machine · evidence · multilingual

Past winners in related hackathons

Winner-badged projects from ended Devpost hackathons that share a theme with this one. Read a few before you pick an idea.

• Seed of Light Project — A full tabletop gaming platform to play with friends across the world! (MuleHacks2026)
• JiveGenie — JiveGenie: the choreography generator that transforms any song clips into TikTok-ready choreography. Simply upload your favorite track, and let JiveGenie generate cool dances to make you go viral! (2024 TikTok TechJam)
• Mulder — A fully autonomous forensic investigator with 140+ typed tools, quality-gated phases, adversarial self-review, and an architecture that makes hallucinated findings nearly impossible. (FIND EVIL!)
• FlipFloppers GPU Kernel Optimization w Agentic Research Loop — Achieved 1.9x to 31.7x Performance Increase, with 7.7x Geomean on a single-node RTX 4090 with Ada Lovelace Architecture! (TikTok TechJam 2026)
• Tether — Tether is a night-out safety app that turns passive location sharing into proactive alerts, connecting friends and sober guardians when users need help most. Leave Tethered, Return Together! (UIUC Product Hackathon - Hack to the Future)
• ResumeFit — Most AI resume tools stop at feedback. ResumeFit closes the loop. Upload a resume, Gemma runs a health check, ranks you against hundreds of real SWE internships with a fit score and matched skills. (305 SummerCodex Edition July 2026)
• Payout — Discover brands that owe you money through class action settlements. Find the ones you qualify for and get paid what's rightfully yours. The easiest way to make money online with no proof required* (RevenueCat Shipaton 2025)
• SafeHer — Not just the fastest route — the safest one (Zero Origin)
• RoofGrid — Turn any rooftop into a practical, data-driven solar plan. (InfinityX Global Hackathon 2K26)
• LinkUp — LinkUp helps students find teammates and mentors, bring their ideas to life, and turn what they build into a LinkedIn profile when their old enough to share their projects. (MuleHacks2026)
• AnonymousAds — A search engine that uses machine learning models to deliver targeted advertising, while at the same time safeguarding user privacy, through the use of fully homomorphic encryption and noise injection (2024 TikTok TechJam)
• TRUDI - Threat Response Unit for Digital Investigation — Built on the idea that we're all smarter than any of us: TRUDI pairs an autonomous DFIR agent with an AI reviewer that challenges its findings, so every conclusion is traceable and trustworthy. (FIND EVIL!)

Judging criteria

Criteria as listed on the official page; weights are not stated there, so they are drawn equal. source ↗

Timeline

Submission period (from Devpost): Oct 09 - 10, 2026. Deadline: Deadline: Oct 10, 2026 @ 12:00pm EDT.

How a beginner can ship

1. Read the rules page

   Check eligibility, team rules and what must be submitted.

2. Pick one idea from the word cloud

   Choose one problem and one user; cut everything else.

3. Build the smallest working version

   One flow that works end to end beats five half features.

4. Record the demo early

   Most Devpost judging leans on the video and description.